It’s never easy when as a music reviewer you have to be harsh on a legendary band. In the thrash world, German band Destruction has done the hard yards to be considered legends. Amazing albums over a thirty year period mean the band should get some say on when they want to try to do something experimental I’m just not sure that an album like Thrash Anthems II is something that people that don’t know that much about the band would want from them.
The idea for Thrash Anthems II was that Destruction through the album idea out to its fans through PledgeMusic. If fans listed some of the classic Destruction songs that they wanted to see re-recorded the band would head into the studio and do just that. In these days and times, it certainly doesn’t feel like a new concept, and you can’t help but wonder whether or not Destruction would have been better off just recording new material.
In most cases, there is a harder edge to the tracks, but the reoccurring theme throughout the album seems to be that a lot of the tracks sound quite ordinary until the work of Mike Sifringer kicks in on the guitar. Sifringer brings some amazing guitar moments to this album – especially on tracks like ‘Confused Mind,’ ‘Ripping You Off Blind’ and ‘Satan’s Vengeance. But to be honest, there are a lot of tracks on the album that did very little for me at all – ‘Black Mass,’ ‘Frontbeast’ and ‘Confound Games’ just sound little regular thrash with nothing to separate them from the other thrash bands out there.
That isn’t the case though with ‘The Ritual,’ ‘Black Death’ and ‘The Antichrist’ which see Destruction do what does separate them from the crowd, which is deliver powerful thrash tracks with lyrics that you would normally hear reserved for some of the more hardcore black metal bands. Perhaps that would have been a better idea for a concept album like this.
While a lot of Destruction’s fans do seem pretty excited to take a listen to Thrash Anthems II, I have to be honest and say that the album did very little for me.
